This is the first volume to take a broad historical sweep of the close relation between medicines and poisons in the Western tradition, and their interconnectedness. They are like two ends of a spectrum, for the same natural material can be medicine or poison, depending on the dose, and poisons can be transformed into medicines, while medicines can turn out to be poisons. The book looks at important moments in the history of the relationship between poisons and medicines in European history, from Roman times, with the Greek physician Galen, through the Renaissance and the maverick physician Paracelsus, to the present, when poisons are actively being turned into beneficial medicines.
Author(s): Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, Jon Arrizabalaga
Series: The History Of Medicine In Context
Edition: 1st Edition
Publisher: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 259
Tags: Medicine: History, Drugs: Toxicology: History: Europe, Poisons: History: Europe, Drugs: Dose-Response Relationship
Cover......Page 1
Half Title......Page 2
Title Page......Page 4
Copyright Page......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
Figures......Page 8
Tables......Page 11
Contributors......Page 12
Acknowledgements......Page 14
Introduction: Deadly medicine......Page 16
1 Poisons in the historic medicine cabinet......Page 24
2 “First Behead Your Viper”: Acquiring knowledge in Galen’s poison stories......Page 40
3 Mining for poison in a devout heart: Dissective practices and poisoning in late medieval Europe......Page 58
4 Pestis Manufacta: Plague, poisons and fear in mid-fourteenth-century Europe......Page 77
5 Alchemy, potency, imagination: Paracelsus’s theories of poison......Page 96
6 Martin Luther on the poison of sexual abstinence and the poison of the pox: From Galen to Paracelsus......Page 118
7 Poisoning as politics: The Italian Renaissance courts......Page 132
8 Gender, poison, and antidotes in early modern Europe......Page 147
9 Mateu Orfila (1787–1853) and nineteenth-century toxicology......Page 165
10 Mercury: “One of the Most Valuable Drugs We Have” (1937)......Page 188
11 Collateral benefits : Ergot, botulism, Salmonella and their therapeutic applications since 1800......Page 206
12 It does all depend on the dose. Understanding beneficial and adverse drug effects since 1864: Clinical and experimental attitudes to the Law of Mass Action and concentration– effect curves......Page 225
Index......Page 256
